A data warehouse system, also referred to as an “enterprise data warehouse,” is a system used for reporting and data analysis. Data warehouses are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. Data warehouses store both current and historical data and are used for creating analytical reports for knowledge workers throughout the enterprise. Examples of reports could range from annual and quarterly comparisons and trends to detailed daily sales analyses.
In such a system, various types of data may be loaded. Furthermore, the number of users and the types of reports that are generated may vary. Additionally, various types of hardware may be utilized and complex configurations may be introduced to the data warehouse system by the user. As a result, various problems may occur in the data warehouse system, such as hardware problems, software problems and configuration problems.
The processing of queries submitted to the data warehouse system may be delayed, fail, etc. because of any of these problems. Due to the large number of queries executed on the data warehouse system, the high complexity of the query operations executed on the data warehouse system and the inter-dependencies between the system components (both physical and logical), there has not been a means for effectively diagnosing the problems causing the delay or failure of the processing of the queries. As a result, it may be difficult to determine which query-level problems require attention and which do not.
Currently, monitoring systems attempting to detect and determine which hardware, software and configuration problems in the data warehouse system caused the delay or failure of the processing of the queries focus on predictive monitoring of the hardware, checking the data/system catalog for consistency as well as monitoring the performance of the queries over time. Such systems are deficient in only focusing on particular aspects of the data warehouse system thereby not providing early diagnosis of the hardware, software and configuration problems in the data warehouse system that can cause delay and failure of the processing of queries to the data warehouse system.